Keeping this one brief (because a head cold is bad enough for your eyes staring at a computer screen, let alone a 3D IMAX for 2 hours), but it seems like everyone and their mother is talking about Guardians of the Galaxy, so here I am doing that. Director James Gunn made Slither, one of the few films I’ve ever watched immediately for a second time after finishing it the first (admittedly, having someone to share it with on Round 2 helped spur the decision). This was in prep for Guardians of the Galaxy, the aggressively strange, seemingly off-brand Marvel comic property that Gunn was picked to direct.
Slither is such a fantastic grab bag of tones and humor that it was all the convincing I needed Guardians would be great. Having Parks & Rec’s Chris Pratt cast as the lead only shored up this feeling. Then the whole Edgar Wright Ant-Man debacle happened, and worry set in. Marvel’s gotten so good at making these pictures under the Disney umbrella, it’s gotten dispiriting. An Iron Man 2 aside, you can always count on two thirds of a Marvel movie being a ton of fun, with a finale that’s a letdown (Thor 2 and The Avengers are the exception to the rule, though no Marvel film is without at least one bum act), and that dependability –and I realize it sounds crazy to complain about such a thing- has become boring. Wright and Gunn represented original voices that didn’t sound like anything coming out of the Marvel Studio machine. When Wright “parted ways” with the studio after laboring on Ant-Man for 6 years, it was a concerning sign of corporate agenda taking priority over creative vision.
So how’d 76 Metacritic score, 92% “fresh” Tomatometer, $94 million opening weekend Guardians of the Galaxy turn out after all? Pretty well, all told. It’s a lot fun, and often very funny at that. Plus, it’s got enough of Gunn’s own spin on the material to make the film feel different from the rest of the Marvel lot. Not too different mind you. The ending is a giant explode-y free-for-all, and the film doesn’t so much have a plot as play kick-the-can with a McGuffin, promising a big setpiece every time we catch-up to kick it again. It’s a film comprised of moments more than writing, and while it needed more individual character moments (though with five co-leads to attend to, it’s a juggling act Gunn does pretty well with), the moments themselves often have a lot of character.
I wish I could have given myself over to Guardians more fully, but its offbeat nature is often sourced from a less than stellar place. Most superhero movies take the wide-eyed child’s perspective in their awe of superheroes and heroism, but the grimier, more sexualized, and definitely more violent universe of Guardians of the Galaxy is speaking to a more hormonal class of nerd fanboy. There’s a frathouse attitude towards women running throughout designed to endear Pratt’s character early, and setup easy punchlines of people calling one another “bitch” and “whore.” It’s infrequent, but sticks out for being kinda venomous amidst the light-hearted fun, especially when Zoe Saldana’s Gamora often has to play the buzzkill to the boys being boys the film often celebrates them for being. The universe of Guardians of the Galaxy is also shockingly conservative, being full of strange planets and cultures that are mostly made up of human dudes, and usually white ones at that.
There’s also the matter of Marvel still being unable to deliver anything resembling a fully realized emotional arc in any of their films. On last inspection, Iron Man 3 came the closest, but the arc of Guardians of the Galaxy’s heroes is that they learn to get along, not that they evolve as individuals. This is most apparent with Pratt’s Peter Quill, whose introduction at the start of the film is so alien-ly, purely sentimental by Marvel standards, the reveal of a giant spaceship makes for a hilarious cut to black. The prologue pays off like gangbusters –both the climax and denouement are insanely affecting and have nice (in the way your own mother might say) messages about teamwork and grief. It doesn’t do the legwork to get us from setup to payoff though, hence why I had to fight the film even as the moment and my sinuses were telling me to weep at the appropriate moments.
Anyway, Guardians of the Galaxy: go see it. It’s a pretty good time, and the soundtrack is killer. No where’s my Cepacol?